THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE

In “The Cellar”, an underground cinema on Duke Street, near the centre of the universe.

Background Radiation. Radio Dust. Pinpoints of Past Fire. Dust, riding the dial, slowly accelerates toward him through the static. The dust sails on waves of flame. (Images of salvoes of blazing Greek lances launched from philosophical times. Their Blades Cleave the Future).

Over his head it all goes, or nearly all of it, for some leaves its mark. His left eye, he blinks. Something causes it to sting slightly.

“Right! You think you’re the centre of the universe, do you not?” Crackled, cackled the hordes, by the static concealed.

“Wrong!” Was his instant riposte, “The centre of the universe is due south east of here, five foot seven and five eighths of an inch in that direction. Me? I’m in orbit.”

SPACE JUNK, PLAYING ON THE SWING (IN MUDDY SHOES)

“Damned Croakers’ve given us all a bad name....”

“Come off it Peter! That’s an urban fairy tale from the mists of time. It never happened. It was all made up by the underground so that we felt something, at least something minimal, was being done, that there was some kind of action....”

“I’ve never told anyone about this before, but I met a Croaker once, when I was at university in London. He was a writer and illustrator a real genius....”

“Bit of Arabic myth slipping in here, then? Demons and jinn strutting about in urban legends....”

“....Mmm, fits though, doesn’t it Alba my dear, a genius jinn with photographic and arts software. He seduced me one evening after I’d gone over the top on the brandy at the presentation of some cheap and nasty gay spy novel he’d written and illustrated the cover for. Didn’t get much from me, but he understood and so, when my head cleared enough in the morning we lay together in his double bed and he offloaded his, don’t know what it was really, guilt perhaps, frustration, more like, on me, the works. They’d sent his lover away to some camp or another in The Muslim Federation for TEET and he’d never seen him again till, quite by chance, someone had sent him the resultant files. That’s when he became a Croaker. Hey Cerebrum, pour me another beer my good lad....Thanks....

“....Quite by chance! I bet! How’d he get into that, How’d he make contact?”

“Didn’t Cerebrum, apparently....and never did. Worked on his own but said he picked up on clues online that there were about twenty or so Croakers working along similar lines to him in The Christian Alliance and some strange things were going down that bore the hallmarks all over the world. Where’d you first catch the word, Alba?”

“Graffiti. Started turning up all over the place ‘bout two thousand twelve....these damned traffic lights gonna stay red forever....I thought it was just some crazy death metal band, “The Croakers”.... So must the authorities, nothing subversive, death metal, adolescent dragon fantasies of the middle aged....“The Croakers”.... right, let’s go then, come on, ‘bout time....that’s a lot of letters to spray and escape from when the sirens approach....Never any concerts, nothing to download, nothing. Traditional English word, “croaker”, “killer” it means, according to that old dictionary over there behind your head, Peter, and as a verb, “croak”, “to croak it”....to die....neat sense of humour....”

“Don’t think he invented the term, think he appropriated it for his own twisted reasons my dear, the Contamination and Re-use of Objectives’ Archives for Key Enemy Renditions. That’s what he said it stood for, but it’s bloody ugly and definitely not very catchy. I got the feeling he just adored the word itself, a bit of bloody black humoured poetry....”

“How’d it work, this plot, then?....¡Joder!....”

“¿Estás bien?....¿Demasiado tráfico?”

“Nada, tío, no, demasiados baches....the plot?

“Well, Alba, a lot of it went straight over my head, I mean, I wasn’t in a particularly fit state, now was I, eh? Goes something like this, as far as I can remember, and I’m not going to be using the right computer jargon either, Cerebrum, so, lend a hand if it’ll make anything clearer for the little one....”

“All the same to me, Pete! I’m just a user, no idea of the mechanics, Cerebrum, better keep your mouth shut, just nod or shake your head if you think he doesn’t know what he’s on about....”

“Ha! Ha!....Right! ....More beer in the fridge, Pete?”

“Hope so, sunshine! Goes something like this....like the letters of the word “croaker”. He’d break into the objective’s computer and appropriate all the codes and data to allow himself to turn his portable into an exact copy, “shadow” was the word he used, of the original. Then he spent months just studying how the computer was used until he could, he became the shadow of original user, a copy and a perfect copy is the real thing! Most archives are stored in enormous banks of servers, not on the victim’s personal hard drives, big mistake; servers looked over by agents of the Department of Culture Equalization, he said, bored most of the time, stupid all of it, if you never ask a question you never find a reason, and they never found any reason to question what appeared to be normal private use of a computer by some mid level civil servant, too intent were they on their torture videos and death games. Anyway, Croaker adjusted bank balances, payments, receipts and inserted fake government forms and documents into archives well hidden from the user and the agents and their crap electronic and human security systems, but relatively easy for Special Alliance Department of Information Control hacks to uncover when he’d decided the time had come for the sacrifice....and got loads of wives, husbands, sons and daughters of middle ranking Alliance operatives rendered for Temporal and/or Terminal Education Exchange Treatment. Made them all into regular little video film stars, he did....”

“That’s impossible, no one’s gonna believe any of that information without an investigation, without a bit of digging around....Nah....don’t believe it....”

“Neither did I! But he insisted. Said the SADIC hacks were fanatics. They believed what they wanted to see and what they wanted to see was the elimination of threats to their beliefs, no questions asked, quick decisive action....hell, he’d joke that if you were carrying round a banner proclaiming god and all the prophets were an invention of The Born Again Priest, they would simply beat you to death because your shoes were dirty....”

“Bollocks....”

“That’s what I said, Cerebrum, but look, first decade of this century half the political and religious classes were making money or sex....”

“....Or both....”

“Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll....”

“.... in extracurricular activities, as it were, no? And leaking information landed lots of them in the fire in the frying pan, right? Anyone ever bother to verify where all that leaking information came from, if it was even true? Who cared? Came from vengeance! Back stabbing. In the public domain, public interest, take it on face value and get it shoved in your face, down your throat....Don’t think, react, the more closed off to thinking the more reaction you get, the less questions get asked, the easier it gets to slip in dodgy information, and I agree whole heartedly with Croaker on that analysis....”

“So this Croaker, in his roundabout way, sent off planeloads of beautiful people to be rendered into snuff videos, kind of collateral damage, right?....”

“Families of fanatics, he said turned out baby fanatics, little beasts, at least from the age of four up. Look at the religions, they always want to get their teeth into good young virgin blood, screw them up young and you’ve got ‘em screwed down for life....That’s my line, by the way, not his....cannon fodder and chattel....”

“Give me the child, I’ll give you the man, or some such....Who said that?....”

“Mmm....concerned citizens, Concerned Citizens groups to be sent fourth and multiply in the public interest and do the dirty on the unsuspecting and unwary, unsuspectingly finding the dirt being done on them....mmm, yes, neat idea....He said that he always saw them strung up screaming in pain, not so much in amazement at their situation, but screaming in jealousy, or envy, or whatever, at not being behind the controls themselves, behind the machines, transformers, cameras, sound equipment, mixing desks....Had quite a sense of humour did Croaker....”

“Sounds like you quite like the man. Seems a monster like all the rest to me, mate!....¡Mierda!....No hay ningún coche en millas y otro semáforo en rojo....”

“He’s dead....Liked, liked....I have to say I had a certain admiration for his work ethic....”

“....Do unto those as they would do unto yours, but get there first and fastest....”

“....and hardest....to an extent Alba, yes….but he committed suicide, drank himself to death, all above board, legal, tax paid on every bottle, drank himself to death in six months because he couldn’t rectify and somehow didn’t want to rectify all the pain he’d caused because, right to the end he felt it was all justified. Justice, Poetic justice....”

“Why then?....What happened?

EUCAUC/F758362100402/REND, Mortimer, Dawn Roxanne is what happened.

“She was different from the rest. She awoke a respect in me, an inescapable respect close to love. It became love. She made me feel profound sorrow which morphed into a paralyzing guilt at what I had caused to be done to her. I had become evil. In my carefully considered, thoughtful, detailed planning I had become more evil than the evil I presumed to be fighting against. This emotion, this guilt lay heavy on my shoulders. I had thought of myself as some kind of freedom fighter, a latter day Jesus, but she had dawned on me that I should, could never presume to bear the weight for some abstract idea of humanity on my shoulders. I had to die, not to carry off the burden of guilt for my fellow man, rather, I had to die simply because I couldn’t live with myself any longer, I couldn’t live with, with my memories, with the images, with the horrifying, concrete knowledge of all the pain I’d caused. Not to humanity, no, to her, her, rising above the crowds, her person, not the people. there was always a shadow of pessimism and defiance in those eyes, a sorrow in her gaze, in her tone of voice even when she laughed, especially when she smiled, that made her beauty so fragile and so perfect.

So I went about setting myself up for the fall. I downloaded and printed out and copied files of her old family videos and photos, a thirteen year old playing on a swing, then her Terminal Education Exchange Treatment, soundtracks, stills, high definition videos, you name it I possessed it, and it all came from the account I’d set her parents up with, illegal, all illegal, and I paid large sums into their bank accounts leaving an evident trail back to me that needn’t ever have existed. I printed out the receipts, had everything scattered round the flat and finally waited for Death to come knocking while her death screamed out from various monitors in pure surround sound clarity.

Death soon came knocking! Death smashed in the door, found me watching Beauty spit blood in the face of The Beast and Death and its henchmen kicked me off my reclining armchair and proceeded to kick me unconscious, just for the fun of it, perhaps I hadn’t polished my shoes enough. When I came round the computers and hard drives, the videos were all gone, as were the associated documents, though I later discovered a wastepaper bin full of ashes on the kitchen balcony. I’d had a visit from the vigilantes of The Concerned Citizens. Now, these guys, as my grandmother would have said, “Can’t see the wood for the trees!” All that illegally bought stuff can be sold on, black marketing, long as there’s no documentation to tie it to anyone and so, profits talk louder than....I was simply invisible, except, of course, to various pairs of military style boots that enjoyed themselves inflicting pain.

I’d given Death the front door to open, given it to them on a plate, as it were, and, in their stupid greed, they’d missed the whole point. Try to get yourself killed, sent to MF Treatment Center 18SA.T or wherever, to pay for your sins, and you get saved, born again, these days. Try to keep yourself safe, out of the way, and you end up as collateral damage, carry round a banner proclaiming god and all the prophets are an invention of The Born Again Priest, and they simply beat you to death because your shoes are dirty.

Mohammed A. , a Croaker in the Muslim Federation, went through much the same thing with a kid called Arun. Atonement. What can we do? I have no desire, we have no desire, to live with this unbearable emotion but that’s the sentence that’s been passed down in the prison of our thoughts.”

“Cerebrum, Big Man, ya gotta jump ship, lose yourself, pirate! I got a Concerned Citizens checkpoint up ahead and something I don’t like the look of ‘s just pulled out behind....”

“Joder, que mierda.... Good luck....”

“I love Jone, you know....”

“I know Alba. ¿Y El Grumo?”

And there is no answer to that you can put into words and Big Man can see that in my eyes. I cancel the hands free conference connection and Mr Cerebrum, with a thumbs up that fills the screen, vanishes from the monitor and I am suddenly all alone, and so I whisper to myself,

“I love you, Jone....”

“Stop the fucking car, shithead.”

“Contact off! Out of that car bitch.... Hands where we can see ‘em....”

And I think to myself,

“Jone, there was always a half hidden hint of defiant pessimism, defiance in your eyes, a pristine sorrow in your gaze, in your tone of voice, even when you laughed, especially when you smiled, that made your beauty so fragile and so perfect....”

“Hands over your head....Identification? Where, where is it cunt?”

“Inside pocket, here....”

And I moved my hand to take out the little electronic ID and the Concerned Citizen nearest me screamed at me not to move even an inch, to keep my hands over my head, to give him my papers, so I moved my hand again and he told me to keep the fuck still, like a statue, so I began to say it was in my pocket and he ordered me to shut the fuck up then hissed,

“Name?”

At that point I was wetting myself with nerves and, when I’m nervous I can’t stop myself laughing and the more I tried to suppress my laughter, the less able I was at it. That’s when he came over to me, standing there on the muddy edge of the road, and put his face an inch from mine and barked,

“Right dirty pair of shoes you got there, eh Slag? What you say?”

And that, Peter, was when the beating started and that was when I knew we were all safe.

SPACE JUNK, PART FOUR, SEX AT A FUNERAL

forever over the sour years go once beautiful girls everyone stuttered dullard grey pearls cancerous city of poison seers bitter traffic of deathly tears over the static years forever curtain go down on beauty forever over the stale years go once beautiful boys everyone dullards grey pearls stuttered city of poison sears cancerous bitter traffic of deathly tears over the static years forever go down curtain on beauty

forever sour the stale years go once beautiful men everyone dullards grey pearls cratered city of poison seers cancerous bitter traffic of deathly tears over the static fears forever way down on beauty curtain go forever hang the stale years on beautiful women everyone cracked grey pearls cratered city of poison sears cankerous bitter traffic of dead tears over the sour years forever curtain go down on beauty

That is the landscape, the panorama they sell us each and every living second and so we took it down off all the rusting nails on all the filthy walls, us, Bug Eyed Peter and The Sunrise Girl, me, Alba and took ourselves out of town and burnt it all to ashes and held a funeral service for all the priests and prophets, crooked death salesmen, each and every one, under the Great Wide Milky Way and we scattered the ashes into the stars and planets and bits of their broken satellites and twisted dreams.

We were looking at each other, holding each other’s hands gently, we were in the dark, a jet black shooting stars night, Peter, and we were cool naked and your penis was falling and looking kind of pathetic and my little breasts too and we were shivery and ghostly white thin, insignificant, sad looking, and you looked up into the galaxy and told me she was of the same star sign as me, well almost, you said, and you began to laugh so hard you doubled up at the waist and you laughed so hard you cried and there was nothing left in all creation except your laugh so I knelt down and held your laugh in my hands and I can never see you cry so beautiful without crying myself and so I cried in love too and you kissed me and my tears rolled down my cheeks onto your lips, onto your tongue and you looked straight into my eyes and told me you had just tasted the universe and so, suddenly, the tears became deadly serious and the scene, fragile beauty reincarnated, and we were perfect again, drinking long and deep of the universe.

The Photograph illustrating this part of the “Space Junk” series of stories was taken by the photographer, writer and philosopher Mr P. Iru, and is used here with his consent.

SPACE JUNK, EPITAPH, VIRGIN PLACES, PENCILS SHARPENED BUT NEVER USED

“Jone, see this Jone, your room is emptiness and silence, a white light, a white, freshly primed canvas sits easy, comfortable on an easel. Sheaves of pristine white writing paper lie patiently, an unwritten tome on the shelf. Jone, there was always a half hidden hint of defiant pessimism, defiance in your eyes, a pristine sorrow in your gaze, in your tone of voice, even when you laughed, especially when you smiled, that made your beauty so fragile and so perfect. Your white room, white walls and floorboards, whitewashed sash windows, crisp white bed sheets wait for you, my love. I open the white paneled door and stand on the threshold staring out into the void, but you, my dear, will never come again.”

“Alba, you must be really, really sure of yourself before you touch such perfect, virgin places and I was never up to it, ever. It was best, by far, to have left them all alone. I could do no better than that. You told me that I was beautiful, that I was Beauty, that the universe was full of beautiful things, and that I was one of those beautiful things. Thank you my dear. Thank you so much. I could have hoped for no more than that, so shed no tears for who I was, my love, and cry only for the better girl I could have been.”

SPACE JUNK, PROLOGUE, THE SUNRISE BABY REMEMBERS JONE

How to keep....is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty.... from vanishing away?

No there’s none, there’s none. Oh no there’s none, nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair, do what you may do, what, do what you may, and wisdom is early to despair....

The Leaden Echo, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

Street lights out, dark, dark night and the stars took my breath away. Tumbling brook, gutters in the street and I’m stumbling, clawing myself up the trunk of a dead skeletal looking tree onto my own two feet, tumbling back up the road, homeward bound, with any of the little luck left to me, so I hope, and now the stars are turned out because I can’t lift my head more than a few footsteps into the future because everything hurts so much, they could have done me a favour, gone a little further, but no one is left for dead, they got to see you up and running, shuffling, no one is left for dead.

So I stumble on and stumble into something and can’t control my bladder and wet myself, which doesn’t matter at all because I’ve only got on my muddy raincoat, nothing else, didn’t even bother to look for anything else, don’t care. Could be mud. Could be blood, could be diarrhea, couldn’t stop it when I eventually got the coat over my shoulders, I think I recall....could be all that stuff, street lights out, dark, dark night. Can’t see. So, anyway, I stop, close my swollen eyes and there she is, perhaps two and a half, three years old floating in a stone enameled kitchen sink. There she is, me, me being bathed by a fat old woman I can never put a face to, or a smell to, or a voice to, but the sink is off white and the water must be at blood temperature because I have no memory of it being hot or cold, but it’s kind of grayish and soapy, and sometimes I can remember the sound of a baby, of me, splashing, but, maybe not, since everything swims in and out of focus and I can only get a grip on what I’m remembering right this moment, so maybe I’m only remembering from last time I remembered my first ever memory of this, my one and only life. Two things are constant. I think two things are constant. On her right foot, on her right foot, my right foot there is a soaking wet sock and, to this day I can feel that soaking wet sock, if I try hard enough. This is my first ever memory. I say “is”, I think “is” because it’s never that exact, it’s been lived so often that it may never ever have happened, but no mind, it’s a memory all the same, part of the ever so colourful history of my life and, looking back, that would have been the time when my brother was born and mother was in the hospital with father smoking up the corridors with his Navy Cuts. So, that would put the stone sink in aunty Vi’s place, next door, and a little later aunty Vi turned out to be no aunty to me at all and aunts who aren’t aunts at all are all supposed to be slightly fat so the woman with no face is slightly fat too. The other thing that’s fairly constant is a sensation, a sensation of being goose pimply fresh and clean and the sock makes me feel even cleaner and goose pimply clean with its heavy sepia soddeness to compare the rest of my body with. Sodden, but I adore goose pimples....and suddenly someone, trespassing in my head says,

“You’re not dead yet Alba, open your eyes!”

Something told me to open my eyes and I, feeling I had no strength to do otherwise, so obedient I am, open my eyes and stumble and stagger on for a little while longer. Street lights out, dark, dark night and there is dirty water calmly singing in the gutters and I’m stumbling against the tide and everything hurts so much. Bubling Brook, Dingly Dell were in one of my storybooks from before the Alliance of Civilizations, weren’t they? Where the Goblins parked the cars they’d stolen from Toyland in the hollow under the roots of the biggest tree in the woods. It was there, wasn’t it? Years ago. How can I have so much blood? I have to keep rubbing something sticky from my eyes. Suppose it’s blood, there’s no rain. Don’t know if there are any clouds, can’t lift my head more than a few paces into the future because everything hurts so much and no one is left for dead. I’m nodding out.

I’m nodding out, so I close my eyes and stumble on and into some kind of metal post that I hug desperately to keep myself upright and I hug it with desperate gratitude, but gratitude does no good and so I slowly slip to the ground and I’m hugging metal with my forehead on a stinking curbstone. I can do no more. I can go no further than this little ring of light. This has to be the only lamppost with light in the whole town and there she is, older but no wiser, me, me on stage, on stage, black velvet drapes and black satins and silks strewn over the boards, spotlight brilliant, but icy cold, over my head, somewhere up there in the universe. And a curtain lifts and there, three years older, just eighteen, is the pretty girl. The prettiest girl. She is naked and shivering just slightly and her head is lowered in modesty but her eyes look up into mine demurely and she holds her hands, fingers lightly intertwined, in the small of her back, palms open for caresses and she is truly beautiful, truely gorgeous. I am naked too but my nakedness is somehow shameful in her light although she doesn’t seem to see it that way. I am with her and softly kiss her eyelids, the cold tip of her nose, her neck just under her pierced ears and the cool creases at the top of her arms and, as I do this I brush her breasts with my cheeks, her nipples with my thumbs. Then we embrace and make love in the spotlight in all the silks and velvet, we turn, slowly in the spotlight and she is shivering so slightly, so ecstatically I have to kiss every goose pimple, each and every one and I am clean and she is pure and we embrace, and I taste her mouth again and we’re in love and in lust, we embrace, but so exquisitely lightly because everything hurts a little too much and there is a tear in her eye, on her cheek, which I kiss away and she licks away the black tears in my brown eyes, sodden in nostalgia for what was and what is to come and we make love again on a black silk draped divan, but oh, so so incredibly gently because everything hurts so much and, just then, orgasm, a shooting pain, shooting stars, a tumbling brook, and I open my eyes to the stinking curbstone, my arms round a dog piss stained lamppost, street lights out on a dark, dark pain filled night. I let go. I let go of her, I let go of beauty and I let go and roll onto my back. Dark night. The universe takes my breath away. Again.

When I eventually get to my feet, heaving myself in slow motion up the fluted, anorexic body of the lamppost, I can no longer see the stars because I can’t lift my head or raise my eyes more than a few unsteady steps into the future. I stumble as I swing slightly round the post, lights out, and move on, heavily, against the tide in the gutter, no one is left for dead. No one is left for dead, just deserted. The street is deserted and, as I move along I get the impression that I’m causing some kind of wave and I sense all the windows closing as I approach and then, just as silently, opening as I pass, thousands of windows, from ground floor to top floor, from one semi detached to the next. Even the stars appear to turn off at my passing, but that’s probably all in my mind although I picture all the night time fauna hushing each other in awe and turning their backs in fear at the sound of my oncoming, uneven footsteps, whispering behind trembling fingers when I’ve passed by and it slowly dawns on me why no one is left for dead but, just at that moment of realization, I hear a sound that hasn’t hushed up at my approach and I tilt my head sideways a little and catch a glimpse, get my eyes raised just enough to see headlights somewhere in my future and a moment later there’s the unmistakable sound of an old diesel engine coming into my present, and my lips are opening and closing but no sound is coming out but my head is saying,

“Please, please don’t do that again, please, don’t hit me there again....”

I sink to my knees. I have my hands on my thighs, slipping to my knees. I’m sitting on my heels and I’m swaying backwards and forwards too, too much, and the back of my head hits the curb but I can feel no more pain so I just don’t care. Street lights out, dark, such a dark night, but the stars are bleached out in these headlights and there’s a smell of diesel fills my lungs. Shooting pain, shooting stars, tumbling brook,

“Please, please don’t do that again, please, don’t hit me there again....”

And I’m gone. The universe has taken my breath away.

SPACE JUNK, EPILOGUE, ALBA GOES HOME

Short Sharp shock....

“Jone y El Grumo....” *

I open my eyes to a shooting pain, shooting stars, a tumbling brook, and discover myself, legs folded under me, all akimbo, soaked in something, foul, acid, acrid smelling, right here in a gutter. There’s an image there of an open car door on my right, but I’m not focussing that well, it’s all kind of blurred nigh time white. White door. A sick anaemic yellow light illuminates, vaguely, tatty aged brownish seats and trim and this universe takes my breath away and I cough and choke back something rather bitter sick tasting and try to move my arms and think about trying to curl into a foetal ball, but nothing works and there are words in my head that say,

“Please, please don’t do that again, please, don’t hit me there again....”

And I think to say them out loud but I can make no sound and suddenly I realise I just don’t care any more because, a rather calm and collected voice floating between my ears advises me I can’t possibly feel any more pain than the pain I’m suffering already, but a cackling black clad character is marching backward and forward in my head, spitting out cheerily from somewhere in my battered memory,

“Don’t you believe it, baby, just don’t you believe it!....”

I blink. Something tells me I should blink furtively, play dead. I blink, I force my eyes shut and will them to stay shut, and it seems like an eternity, fat chance, but I just don’t feel anything now, not anxiety, not sickness, just emptiness and an unreasonable calm as I drive up to the checkpoint,

“I love Jone, I love her so much....”

“Stop the fucking car, shithead.”

I pull on the handbrake and punch the button to shut down the Daciaelectric’s systems and the car hums into silence.

“Out of that fucking car, cunt, right this instant....”

I close my eyes tight shut and reach for the pull up handle to open the door. I cough and choke back something rather bitter sick tasting and want, have an overwhelming desire, to open my eyes to catch a glimpse of stars enough to make me feel so tiny, so insignificant I no longer am but, when I do blink, I see the moon there, right there, bobbing about right in front of my face making me feel quite faint and uncontrollably dizzy all over again. And then I think I hear a voice from light years away and, quite by chance, my eyes focus close to and there’s Peter, the goddamned beautiful, beautiful shithead, goddamned Peter, Bug Eyed Peter, and the bloody idiot is crying his stupid stupid blue English eyes out. The moon is filling the curb, the goddamned gutters with, with rivers of tumbling water. The moon is crying for me, and the voice has brought my name back to me from somewhere out there in the infinite, has given me my name back, my name back and my world, my little bit of beautiful, gorgeous world too, so I am crying too because you always have to cry for someone who’s willing to throw it all away, again and again, to save you, in spite of it all.

While Bug Eyed Peter lifts me into our battered Megane, I turn this thought, over and over and over again, deep inside my head,

“Suicide! This is tantamount to suicide....my love, they’ll do for you what they’ve done for me twice over....tantamount to suicide....”

And, as Peter pushes the back of the passenger seat into its reclining position, the pain of these ideas surpasses the pain of my beating and the pain of him strapping the seatbelt over my chest. I grimace and let out a low, guttural groan.

“I know, I know lover, let’s see if we can get ourselves home in one piece.”

And the Megane had a panoramic roof and the moon, and the stars and the universe took my breath away, so my first words to Peter, precious Bug Eyed Peter, were not about how much I loved him, how much I adored him, but,

“You can read my mind, can’t you....”

* A good deal of the inspiration for this “SPACE JUNK” series was drawn from a painting titled “JONE Y EL GRUMO”, by the painter David F. Brandon. I would like to thank him for permission to use a detail from this painting as an illustration in “SPACE JUNK, PART ONE, AFTER THE BEATING”.

I hope Brandon will forgive me for the extensive use I have made of the title of his artwork in my written work and, I have to say that “SPACE JUNK” could well have been titled, in honour of the painting, “JONE Y EL GRUMO”. Thank you Mr Brandon, "THE PRETTY GIRL" has found her name.

Click on this text to view the most recent version of Brandon’s painting.

Bashir B. Sherpa.

SPACE JUNK, PART ONE, AFTER THE BEATING

Jone y El Grumo, Jone Y El Grumo, then all the pain, all the painful detail and Jone y El Grumo disintigrated again in a breath of comforting blackness.

After the beating, sometime after the beating, I regained a semblance of consciousness awhile.

Something under me was clawing me into the blood and cement and something invisible above was crushing the air from my....

Street, damp dirt and stones, blood, it all seemed to be so very intimate and incredibly detailed and vast and painful. The sky felt so darkened and far away and insignificant, an agony of distance away, and I could never have got a grip on the void even if I could have moved more than a splitting right eye....

Wall, broken down wall over there in front of my eye. Names, names, marks, graffiti all over the wall. Amongst the crowd, the long gone gang, Jone y El Grumo, Jone y El Grumo....

I knew a Jone once, way back then in two thousand and nine, so El Grumo must have been The Beast....

Jone y El Grumo....

SPACE JUNK, PART TWO, BITS AND PIECES

January 11th, 2007, Xichang Space Centre, China.

Controllers follow a kill vehicle on track to intercept a defunct Feng Yun weather satellite. With flawless engineering, control, timing and targeting the missile blows said satellite into more than two thousand five hundred pieces ten centimetres or more in size, not to mention smaller killer particles, incrementing debris in Low Earth Orbit by forty percent or more, and there is more, a lot more, to come.

February 10th, 2009, Low Earth Orbit.

Cosmos 2251, a Russian signals satellite and Motorola’s Iridium 33 bump into each other between seven hundred and nine hundred kilometres above our heads converting themselves into, perhaps, more than one hundred thousand pieces of junk bigger than a centimetre in diameter, and there is more, a lot more, to come.

And I remember Mr Cerebrum saying, way back then, imitating the sardonic drawl of William S. Burroughs,

“Now that's what I call a reaal quiet orrgasm....”

February 25th, 2016, Pennsylvania, a backcountry road, The United States of America.

A real solid lump of a malfunctioning GPS satellite smashes into a horse drawn buggy pulled up just before a nearby intersection. Preacher Jakob never gets his pencil drawn map the right way around and his broad rimmed black hat is a real bloody mess, not to mention his last thoughts....

....That is that, and the horse glances nonchalantly sideways, a one eyed glance, and ambles, kind of bored, over to the nearest patch of juicy green roadside grass.

And I remember Mr Cerebrum saying, way back then, imitating the sardonic drawl of William S. Burroughs,

“Shame he hadn’t worked out beforehand, you know, with a little more attention to detail, in what the hell direction the sun rised in them there parts, coulda avoided a reeal baad headache....”

January 10th, 2025, South East England, on a backcountry road.

Breezing through the parched English countryside in my battered Daciaelectric Hydro*, hands free mobile and GPS systems hacked to send in erroneous, but believable, triangulations to whomsoever it might concern, breezing along, (that is, a breeze only from the air con fan turned up to its limit) listening to some nostalgic jazz tinged hard rock by The Blue Roadsters, and Mr Cerebrum and I, in one of those mutual moments that need no words and have no explanation, decide to switch to a crackly sounding DAB news broadcast just in time to hear,

“....Mars Project Way Station disintegrates in low earth orbit. Scientific speculation has it that the Way Station was struck by part, or parts of a reactor from one of thirty two ancient Russian radar tracking satellites that itself had recently been nudged out of its previous orbit by debris from an unknown source impossible to track back....Fifteen lives lost....Well over half a million additional sizeable pieces of orbital space junk calculated added to LEO debris....”

And Mr Cerebrum, as he is want to do, switches to imitation mode. Robert De Nero (Anyone remember ever downloading one of his?) as Mafiosi Government Criminal, but the content is Burroughs, William S. Burroughs,

“What are you here for? We’re all here to go. That’s what we’re all here for. Earth is going to be a space station and we’re here to go. Into space. That’s what we are here for. Do I hear any questions about that?”

*The last private (non military/police) transportation vehicle built by deviants in the European Sector of The Alliance of Civilisations, not by reconditioned non terminal rendition prisoners in The Muslim Federation.

SPACE JUNK, PART THREE, JONE Y EL GRUMO

“Well, Yep! That was then and there and now is most definately here and right now. Hey, you feeling nostalgic, or what?”

“Ya just gone 'nd hit the nail square on the head babe....”

January 10th, 2025, South East England, approaching a backcountry vigilante roadblock.

Mr Cerebrum and yours truly both look at each other and smile and think it lucky that William’s trips were really into the interior lands, the only lands left to visit, and, in an instant, I shoot a look out of the passenger window, over my left shoulder, and, in a flash remember when there had once, once upon a time, been leaves on trees to flash by, and there is more, a lot more, to come.

And Cerebrum is getting all animated,

“....and the circle closing in above our heads, in space, our very own little bit of space, neat stuff, neat looking shroud, mint! Trapped, mint! Lucky for the universe this virus got nowhere else to go ‘cept into archaeological oblivion....”

“....tuck in the shroud, screw down the coffin lid, shovel on the dirt, nighty night....”

“Virus, most goddamned useless virus ever lived....got sexy armpits though....”

“You just have to get those lines in , don’t ya? Or died, my big man, or died! Junk, dead, inert, cosmic junk. What ya think of that then?”

And Cerebrum slips into Burroughs Mordant Mode, yet again,

“As your old uncle Bill would tell ya all, sure is a hell ova shame it aint the kind of junk you can inject....”

I notice an acrid, chemical smell circulating into the car. Scorched earth thick black smoke from burning tyres up ahead,

“Cerebrum, Big Man, ya gotta jump ship, lose yourself, pirate! I got a Concerned Citizens checkpoint up ahead and something I don’t like the look of ‘s just pulled out behind....Trapped....Mint, muñeca mia....”

“Joder....Mierda....Good luck....”

“I love Jone, you know....”

“I know Alba. ¿Y El Grumo?”

And there is no answer to that you can put into words and Big Man can see that in my eyes as I move to cancel the hands free conference connection and Mr Cerebrum, with a thumbs up that fills the screen, vanishes from the monitor and I am suddenly all alone, and so I whisper to myself,

“I love Jone....”

“Stop the fucking car, shithead. Stop the fucking car....”

829B. A GODDAMNED CUP AND SAUCER SILVER SPOON CRETIN, WATCHING, JUST WATCHING AND KEEPING IT UNDER HIS (FUNERAL) HAT

“Hey you! Watch where you look! You blind you goddamned cretin, can’t you see?”

“The lame never have even the slightest dirty coal dust clue to

The blind who see more hard and diamond clear than they ever do

Never dare offer help when you collide into them in the street

When you have little idea how to get up onto your own two feet”

“I said you, cretin! Are you blind or what you goddamned fool, watch where you look!”

“There’s a nice, refreshing cup of tea sitting under my black silk top hat

Brewed especially, ceremoniously, by my steadfast hand, just for you

Bone china crockery, Chinese blue waves! So what do you think of that?

Look! There’s imagination trodden under your shoe! One sugar or two?”

HAND IN GLOVE, ON A TIGHT, BLACK SILK BODICE (A VICTORIAN COSTUME DRAMA)

David John Johnson, one time child miner in various Welsh pits, bit part actor on later epoch Victorian stages, with a strong baritone voice, stitched full facemasks together from leather gloves acquired, by slightly surreptitious means, from society ladies on their cultural evenings out at the opera, or the theatre houses and concert venues of our grandest of cities. He wore these masks in the dirty dark of gaslight night and thus was touched by the loveliness and elegance of his time.

David John Johnson, not being particularly proficient at the noble art of stitching, was never really one hundred percent satisfied with the results of his artworks for, wearing one of his creations, his face appeared, out there, in the tarnished mirror in his workshop, to have taken on the sun baked leprous texture and sepia colour of illustrations of diseased dark populations of the Empire displayed in illustrated magazines that charitable ladies would pass on to each other with earnest sounding voices saying, in decorous whispers,

“Something really ought to be done for them....Poor dears....”

Perhaps ladies of such breeding would take pity on him, but, whatever the case might be, wearing his masks, he at least, had been touched by them and, from the inside, for the insider, his masks were the tortured faces of the wise and the aged, the venerated, and were so because he was, he convinced himself, voyaging back and forth in time and space caressed by women of virtue, education and good taste who wore soft, well cured leather with just a faint reminiscence, now and then, of delicate perfumes and face powders.

It is difficult, well nigh impossible, to respect a secret, let alone understand its significance or true reach and David John Johnson’s wife was no exception to this well established tenet. One late rainy Friday evening, not long after Johnson had donned his silk top hat, tails and his most recent, and, as yet, most carefully realised face of wisdom, with its dash of sun bleached pink, his traitorous lady wife and young scamp of a son consigned his tatty and soiled (to their appreciation) collection of upper class cultural caresses, his time and place machines (though they had no inkling of any of these concepts), to the fires of hell (the stove in the corner of the greasy white tiled kitchen downstairs) in a spasm of self induced shame and impotence, and she sermonised,

“Cauterise the present and the future be purified!”

“How the ignorant deceive themselves into a profound belief in such simplistic solutions. They always miss the box at the back of the wardrobe to concentrate on the locked chest in the alcove behind the tapestry in the workshop....”

Was the thought he kept to himself in the midst of her sermonising.

Under the porch, dark eyes, distorted through a lozenge of glass in the leaded window on the right of the front door, dark deep-set eyes look into another world, another universe. Safari trophies from every part, severed heads stare down on etchings of bulky beasts from some far distant exotic African colony, hung on the wall above the blazing fireplace of Lord and Lady Townsend Coles’ reception room. Sun baked, earth encrusted, rhinoceros hide, the beast. The beast.

“The Beasts!”

“I just cannot, for the life of me, imagine what has become of those dear pink gloves, can you, Arthur? James, James! ....Ah, James, I need a brandy before we leave....”

Once upon a time, thankfully, David John Johnson’s darling wife passed away. She contracted an influenza which complicated into a pneumonia, her lungs had never been very resistant to infections, so there was little to be done and his son had vacated the premises, poisoned by his mother’s shameless love and protectiveness for him, unable to look his father directly in the eyes ever again since one fiery night, years before, when they had waited up for father’s return and he had welcomed them both, from a wisdom deep inside his best face, in the hall, with a hug and kiss and a

“Jolly good night to the both of you!”

There was nothing else to be done, nothing else to be said.

There was nothing else to be done, but one bright break of day, David John Johnson woke to discover, in the oval mirror above the washbasin, that his time travelling days were over, finally he had actually arrived at his destination without having been touched by his lovely lady friends at all, and he was serene and happy beyond belief, king in his castle.

It is complicated, however, well nigh impossible to respect a secret and, on his deathbed David J. Johnson’s not so well beloved son insisted on bringing his fiancée to his father’s den of iniquity with the intention of teaching her the lesson of how he had avoided the traps and snares of moral perversion, moral perversion and social depravity in the figure of his father, the freak wasting away in penury, on greyish bed sheets, in front of their very eyes!

“I could have ended up in that Godforsaken state, don’t you just know it?”

Of course, Dawn, my future grandmother, fifteen years old that week past, never said a word of it to her fiancé, but this old man, to her mind’s eye, was a picture of pure contentment and she wondered if she would ever manage to be as happy as he appeared to be as she gently pulled at each finger of her dark claret coloured leather gloves in turn, finally revealing pastel pale, delicate, gorgeous hands the like of which David had never seen before. Cool alabaster hands on a tight black silk bodice, and he knew he had finally been profoundly touched for the ultimate time and he moved his deeply lined face, haloed in pure silver hair, better to see Dawn, slightly towards the couple framed, in late afternoon light, in the curtained window.

His deathbed smile for her eyes only, was the smile of a wisdom hidden behind no mask, and his last words came from a place only wisdom could travel to, hand in glove, in a broken baritone,

“God doesn’t know, Dawn, but there’s heat in the deep down seams, darkness in the hot night, gas in the streetlamps, light in cupboard, dark in space, coal in the bunker out back black, light in the box at the back of the wardrobe. Head in hand, hand in glove, glove in hand, blood in your veins, in the universe, in the universe an infinity of wondrous, beautiful things, child, and you are one of them.”

David John Johnson’s son was never to be my grandfather, but he was to be a man of god.